may be choice. And, in choosing, I accept one way while
rejecting the rest. … And obviously the ‘or’ thus contained
in choice is exclusive; and any other view as to ‘or’ would,
here at least, conflict with plain fact. … What is true here
is that when, and so far as, in choice or otherwise, you
identify yourself with one possibility, the residue tends to
be regarded or at least treated, so far, as not even possible.
It is taken for our purpose, we may say, in the lump and as
all one, and so, we may add, is taken but as one only. … In
a complete and perfect system, where all conditions were
filled in, the real Universe would have all its determinations
at once, all as connected and each as qualifying the others
and the whole. And here negation would disappear except
as one aspect of positive and complementary distinction.
But for us this ultimate stage of the intellect remains an
ideal, in the sense that it can not in detail and everywhere
be attained completely.] bottom of p. 137: This is admirable
(except for ‘Universe’ on the next page).
[The principle of Identity is often stated in the form of a
tautology, ‘A is A.’ If this really means that no difference
exists on the two sides of the judgments, we may dismiss
it at once. It is no judgment at all. As Hegel tells us, it sins
against the very form of judgment; for, while professing to
say something, it really says nothing. It does not even assert
identity. For identity without difference is nothing at all.
It takes two to make the same, and the least we can have is
some change of event in a self-same thing, or the return to
that thing from some suggested difference. For, otherwise,
to say ‘It is the same as itself’ would be quite unmeaning.
We could not even have the appearance of judgment in ‘A
is A,’ if we had not at least the difference of position in the
different A’s; and we can not have the reality of judgment,
unless some difference actually enters into the content of
what we assert.] ‘For identity … suggested difference’: Yes.
after ‘what we assert’: But the fact remains that one comes
across assertions that ‘A is not A’ that make ‘A is A’ synthetic. E.g. Sartre, L’Être et le Néant, p. 33.
[… if anything is individual it is self-same throughout, and
in all diversity must maintain its character.]: Of course.
[We might remark that no thing excludes any other so long